3CS AsiaPacific focuses on the use of cultural heritage capital to realise opportunities for organisational and community sustainability, particularly in response to globalisation and climate change. Areas of interest include:
* Cultural mapping
* Bringing people together
* Collections mapping
* Building cultural capital
* Applying significance and risk management methodologies
* Establishing creative economies and responding to change
* Modeling for sustaining cultural resources
* Working on projects for the future
3CS Director Ian Cook is working on a monograph on cultural mapping in association with AusHeritage board member Emeritus Professor Ken Taylor from the Australian National University. The project is a joint endeavour between AusHeritage and the ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information. One of the key outcomes of the project is to see wider use of cultural mapping as an instrument to support development and sustainability in the Asia-Pacific.
As part of the cultural mapping project Ian Cook delivered a paper at the Center for Khmer Studies International Conference, Cambodia and Mainland Southeast Asia at its Margins, Minority Groups and Borders, Siem Reap, March 2008. The paper: Taking the lid off the cooker discussed the potential for cultural mapping to contribute ideas for sustaining communities, supporting poverty alleviation and as mechanisms for bringing young and old people together to address problems related to intergenerational conflict and the disintegration of community values.